It would probably help build strength, but it might mess up your bike handling skills if you do it a lot. If you're training and/or interested in going fast, the heavier bike may mess up your pace up the hills and mess with your handling down the other side.

It's best to ride what you're going to be riding all the time, inmyonionheadedopinion. If you need to train harder, find steeper hills and do longer intervals.

Lead-weights in a water-bottle will add about 10-lbs to your bike. Will sure give you a good workout going up hills. Then again, you can just use bigger gears and go faster on the hills for the same kind of effort.

+1... don't forget to pick up some heavy duty (cheap) water bottle cages. Back in college I was training for a local MTB race and road around for a month with 7lbs. of lead shotgun pellets in a single water bottle. While riding over a bump one day I heard a loud pop and the bike suddenly felt lighter. I realized a few minutes later I was missing the weight and half a plastic cage and had to double back and look for it.

Of course it would help. ..SO LONG as you don't compensate for it by switching your gearing. I should also be sure to mention that compensation of any kind will negate the added weight.
As in going slower with the added weight. You have to mainting the same speed with the weight as you would without in order for it to have any effect. You could just pedal harder and not worry about weight. Same thing.
BUT
lol Attach a parachute behind the bike, that would be sweet. -Would work much better than adding a few pounds to the bike but being able to find a place to safely use it would be the hard part.

Last edited by sunofsand; 07-28-06 at 02:14 PM.

Cause the more cyclists notice me the more ILovemyself.Cause the more cyclists notice me the more ILovemyself.